From poet Donald Hall, citing and commenting on his favorite quotes:
Eric Gill: "Work is sacred, leisure is secular." Georgia O'Keeffe: "The days you work are the best days." Matisse: "Work is paradise." Rodin: "To work is to live without dying." And then Flaubert, to keep us honest: "It passes the time."
Handke. I think he's an acquired taste, D'art. I've only read him in translation -- he's often hard going but I find him rewarding. My two favorites so far are Slow Homecoming and On a Dark Night... Haven't read Goalie. Have also read and didn't particularly like Across. Have Repetition and haven't read it yet. I think the first one of his I read, Slow Homecoming, has left the most lasting impression, probably because I identify very strongly with his alter ego, Sorger. If you do get into Handke sometime, I'd love to know what your impressions are. Would also like to hear from anyone who's read him in German and can comment on the translations...
I think I'll vote for Flaubert's point of view today!
Not really a quote but apparently James Joyce had trouble with his feet. Perhaps bunions? Any way, he wore sneakers which in the old days were rather smelly things and his wife Nora, who was meticulous in her dress, hated them. Joyce tried to pass off the sneaker wearing as an economy measure. So, Henry Miller and ............ hmmmm, not certain, but I think it was the American right wing poet, author of the unreadable Cantos ..... one day ceremoniously presented Joyce with a pair of shoes, donated by one of them and wrapped in brown paper and set on Joyce's table at a Paris cafe.
Nice story! I'm guessing the poet in question was Ezra Pound...
D'Artagnan wins the Kwepie Doll. My ability to remember names is such a trial.
I'm not sure of the authenticity of the quote, but commenting on Shakespeare's wordiness, when told, with a certain amount of pride, that Shakespeare did not a word spare, Marlow said, "I would that he had."
Good line from Marlowe, only it's Shakespeare, in all his wordiness, who's performed around the world in the 21st Century.
D'Artagnan,
Am reading Who Killed Kit Marlowe which is interesting and fun. Makesw a nice companion to the theory that Marlowe faked his death, went into exile in Italy where he wrote Shakespeare.
I hate the anti-Avonian theories because to me such thoughts indicate the speaker has no belief in the individual. Who knows? Maybe in five hundred years, people will say Dylan wrote Springsteen.
The Marlowe sounds like fun, plainoldme. Who wrote it?
There was a Scottish cartoonist, John Glashan, who once a wrote a cartoon story re the authorship of those plays. The premise was that Shakespeare was a failed young playwright who knew a bartender named Yorick. Yorick wrote plays but knew that a bartender wouldn't be taken seriously, so he gave them to Shakespeare with the understanding that Yorick would get a share of the profits. The plays--the ones who know as Shakespeare's--are wildly successful, and after a while Yorick become jealous of all the attention S is getting. He decides to end the arrangement, and S is happy to retire to Stratford. Yorick then submits a new play under his own name--and it's rejected. Despondent, he kills himself, and you can guess the last line in the cartoon:
"Alas, poor Yorick..."
The Marlowe book was written by a British mystery writer who I believe is named T. J. Trow and his son Tristan.
I remember when the movie Elizabeth with Cate Blanchett came out. I was working with a high school girl who thought the movie was wildly inaccurate. But reading Trow's book, which discusses the spying that went on during that time, makes the dark atmosphere of the movie seem so right. Also, I can't help but think of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's "friends" who turn out to be double agents.
I recommend Who Killed Kit Marlowe. It's full of things to consider and is an easy read.
Looking to revive some old, old, old threads.
Recently picked up the first three volumes of the Paris Review interviews -- not that Hilton girl, but the literary magazine -- with authors that were popular in the middle of the 20th C. Fun reading! Excellent writing!
To help in reviving the thread, I have always liked this quote from William Faulkner:
Quote:If I had to chose between pain and nothing, I would always choose pain. I can not live in nothingness.
"All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine".
James Joyce
Selected Joyce Carol Oates Quotations
Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.
When people say there is too much violence in my books, what they are saying is there is too much reality in life.
Our house is made of glass . . . and our lives are made of glass; and there is nothing we can do to protect ourselves.
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it's gone -- its value is incontestable.
In love there are two things -- bodies and words.
Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love.
Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.
Susan Sontag
Great selection of quotes.
Yes, good ones, Miller!
Here's one from Sam'l Beckett, whose centenary we now celebrate:
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."
